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Art Description

Photography:
Color, C-type and Digital
on
Paper.

THE COAST OF DEATH

A dramatic title? Maybe, but that is in fact the name of the coast or, in Spanish, La Costa de la Muerte. It gets its name from the shipwrecks and cemeteries littered along its reef-lined coastline. The most recent victim was an oil tanker The Prestige that sank in a storm in 2002 and coated 200 miles of coast with crude oil.

If the sea is not out to get you then something else will. It's that kind of place. Today the sea is calm but a forest fire has been raging round the countryside like a wild beast. I watched it the night before as a red line a mile wide advancing on a ridge.

This was a difficult photo to take. I only had two 4"x5" slides left for the camera. The fire was out of control and the Spanish army were moving everyone out. Soldiers were heading my way but luckily they got orders to move to the other side of the fire. I took my chance, set up my tripod and loaded the camera with a 4"x5" slide. It's not a quick job using a large format camera as you have to cover yourself with a cape and use a magnifier to focus on the glass like some ancient from the 19th century. I held my nerve, the white smoke swirling around me, went through the usual routines and exposed both plates. One of them came out.